Food and living alone

paulineb_2

Ive never had many issues living on my own and not having freezer space and cooking for one. I also dont eat meat and as I said before sometimes I'll make a curry and I'll eat the same twice in a row, my leftovers go into soup.

Of course its probably more economical cooking for a family of four than it is for one person, but if you dont buy a lot of processed foods then you dont feel a big difference. Microwave dinners for one, the portion sizes tend to be pitiful anyway

I eat rice, pasta, make curries with tofu, veg fajitas, enchiladas, mushroom dopiazas, veg curries, risottos. I make soups, all kinds of veg soup, potato and leek, spinach, lentil, sweet potato.

Im not a massive potato lover either but I bought a large bag last week, yellow stickered so Ive had a lot of potatoes this week.

Im lucky in the respect that Ive a food co op near me, I live in an area that has a lot of people on benefit and local people are trying to sell low cost fruit and veg, it only opened 3 weeks ago but its been useful

I dont mind food shopping and apart from deliveries from approved foods I go and get bits and pieces from somewhere like home bargains every other day

One thing I dont really do is meal plan, I just have whatever I fancy on the day or whatever is there, but Im rarely stuck for meal options

What I did when I started cooking meals from scratch was make one main meal and then add to it recipe wise so that after a couple of weeks I had something I could cook from scratch every night if I wanted to

I dont really use this site and shes been spoken about on here before, but there are some recipes on the blog a girl called jack that might be useful to some people, they arent all meat free

https://www.agirlcalledjack.com

candygirl

I live alone at the moment:j:j:j:j and am veggie, so cook loads of stuff, freeze it, inc bread and buy a lot of frozen veg!I can't see the dilemma tbh:o

candygirl

PasturesNew wrote: »

Because you have a !!!!!!!' freezer.

With a freezer, nothing's a problem.

No actually I have two, and they weren't hard to acquire love;):D

candygirl

PasturesNew wrote: »

Two? Blimey. Room for a lot of pies!
I thought only families of 6 had 2, or farmers who killed their own whole pigs/cows/whatever.[/QUOTE]

A very weird presumption!!I have had two since I was married with a family, and now have Grandchildren, and I love cooking so manage to fill the freezers.Also no animals at all have been put in my freezers as I am a life long veggie!!I love the massive generalisations though:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

jm2926

When I was a skint student, my weekly plan was to roast a small chicken, have dinner, keep rest for dinner/lunch and make broth for the week from the stock (keeps in the fridge provided flatmates don't eat it). Later in a bedsit with no oven, the plan changed to buy from the local grocer, so off the bus, buy 1 onion, 1 pepper etc and cook to order. Rice with herbs/spices and "whatever" (veg/meat) is still on the menu today. Eggs to use leftovers in omelettes/frittata etc is very useful.

Supermarkets don't work well for single folk, I was lucky enough to have a green grocer. It's better to buy 1 pepper for 69p instead of 3 for 99p if you wont use it. Unfortunately my local greengrocers now don't have enough turnover of produce and I find it goes off very quickly so I'm back to the supermarket and meal plan and use the freezer to save stuff, but I know how hard it is cooking for one.

Pop over to the old style board HERE as they know how to use everything.

Dunroamin

PasturesNew wrote: »

You can go up and down, reading the flavours, seeing the prices, then form an opinion which ones look best, sound nicest, are cheapest.

I meant for meat really. If you want to buy, say, a pork loin chop I can't see the difference between looking for a packaged one (if they're even packaged singly) or just saying to the butcher "one pork loin chop please".

Our butchers are great, really nice and friendly. They'll suggest cooking methods if you ask and bone, roll it etc if you want them to do that. They choose what you want to your requirements as well.

You can't beat a good butcher, particularly for the cheaper cuts of meat that the supermarkets often don't stock.

Kirri

PasturesNew wrote: »

Actual butchers are as rare as hen's teeth - and full of blood/guts and raw meat (which turns my stomach). Butchers aren't afraid to serve people wearing bloodied aprons etc.

I'm surprised you even eat meat if you feel like that about it, even if packaged up in a supermarket.

honeythewitch

PasturesNew wrote: »

I dislike the tone of "chirpy moms"

I can see that "A girl called Jack" might not be to everyone's taste, but she can hardly be described as "chirpy" when her blog describes the despair of being unable to feed your child.

There are some advantages to only having to buy for yourself.
You can eat whatever you feel like and it is easier to treat yourself to (for example) fillet steak if its just the one rather than six.

paulineb_2

Jack Monroe who writes the girl called jack blog isnt a chirpy mom, shes someone who had to make very low cost meals because she was living on benefits and struggling. As I said, I dont use her recipes often as Im a pretty decent cook, but her blog might help a few people with some ideas. Thats why I started cooking more from scratch, because Im on a low income and I couldnt afford to be buying processed foods, its much cheaper for me to buy ingredients and cook fresh as much as I can.

There are some home bargains down south, if you go in their website and put your postcode in you'll find out if theres one near you

I had never tried tofu either, till I tried it and liked it, sometimes its good to experiment a bit food wise.

Oh and the aldi super six fruit and veg where they sell selected fruit and veg cheap has been helpful to me

A food co-op is where local people get together and buy fruit and veg in bulk from a supplier and then pass it onto local people as cheaply as possible, they operate from a local community centre. I dont buy everything from them as aldi super six does some stuff cheaper but I'll buy something from them once a week, its once a week they run the food co op from the community centre in the housing scheme I live in.

Dimey

PasturesNew wrote: »

I don't eat much. I try to snip the ends of sausages while they are still in the packet, then slide them from the packet directly into the dish/pan.

I can't even eat at a table where somebody else on the table is eating directly off the bone, when the meat's cooked. And, for meat, I used to go for Sunday lunch at a bf's house 20 years ago and his mother would serve my beef on a separate plate so I could cut off the fatty bits (which the cat then had) before putting the 100% lean bits onto my plate.

I'm not as "odd" as you Pastures New but I definitely recognise some of your tendencies in myself.

I hate fat on meat and cut it off before it goes on my plate. Always have done. I even trim all the fat off bacon. A fiddly job.. Ha Ha.

I never liked fat as child and as Mum always bought cheap meat, stews were often full of gristly lumps that would make me wretch.

I remember being held down in the chair force fed once, by an Aunt who disapproved my picky ways and showed my Mum how to deal with me. That not only turned me off my Aunt but also turned me off stew.